Month: March 2005

Back when The Voice of the Turtle was a paper-bound beast, “Apologies for Tyrants” used to be a regular feature. Chris over at the Virtual Stoa is back from his Easter travels. He stopped off in Libya, where he collected a splendid piece of evidence regarding Moammar Ghedaffi’s VW Beetle, a document that will undoubtedly feature in an encomium to the man once he cashes in his chips. Check it out.

As ever, South Africa is reinventing itself. The latest iteration is the controversial decree that 57,000 places are scheduled to be renamed, with signposts such as “Kaffir Kraal” “Kaffirfontein” and “Bushman’s Drift” quite rightly being consigned to the dustbin of history. Although 57,000 renamings looks like the erasure of history that precedes frothing-at-the-mouth national xenophobia, there are still far too many noxious places on the map.

Couple of days back, I posted on the fight around the Bisaser Road dump in Durban. We’re still trying to get journalists interested in the largest streetfight in Durban since the end of apartheid, and trying to lawyers interested in freeing people from jail.

A few links for World Bank obsessives, the first being a link to a link back to this very page. Not terribly helpful in the long run, but the journey’s entertaining- follow the white rabbit to the World Bank President site, and see what the NGO world in the EU and US are up to.

Cinema in South Africa going through a bit of a rejig at the moment, if not quite a renaissance. Almost certainly the best thing is that the price of movie tickets has more than halved, through a masterstroke by the cinema giant Ster-Kinekor. Cinema-going remains a rather stuffy affair, with tickets priced at R30 for the cheap shows, rocketing to R100 for the Friday evening show in a few places. That’s about US$16. For this, you get reserved seats, and a cinema empty but for the tossers, including yours truly, who can afford to pay to get in.

This is a little old, but it’s tremendously revealing of the state of mind of the World Bank staff. They feel, it seems, that Wolfowitz is an inappropriate person to head their organization. And, check this. It’s not only because he doesn’t know anything about development. It’s because he may or may not be shagging a staff member. I suppose with six billion of us on the planet, one of us had to find the man attractive. Hard to believe, but I suppose if there’s one of them, there might be more. I look forward to a Boeing-like scandal, or maybe even shenanigans with the interns, in the near future.